


Things That Creep

by Astharoze



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Low Chaos (Dishonored), Low Chaos Daud (Dishonored), M/M, Royal Spymaster Daud (Dishonored)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2019-01-29
Packaged: 2019-04-26 17:46:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14407254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astharoze/pseuds/Astharoze
Summary: AU where Daud is a young heretic who is just going about his ways, studying everything he can, and decides it would be brilliant to infiltrate the Abbey and utilize all their knowledge and influence for his own education. He steps through a doorway in the Abbey basements, curious about the runes and writings scrawled all over it, and walks out in another time. In Dunwall Tower.And a much older Corvo Attano finds a younger version of his lover meandering around his home, dressed as an overseer.





	1. Archway

**Author's Note:**

> I've missed writing fanfic a lot  
> This just kind of. Happened. Because my roommate and I have about 500 AUs kicking around at any given time.  
> So here's a setup chapter that got way, way, way longer than I ever intended. Second chapter and gratuitous nsfw very soon.

The Abbey of the Everyman was exactly what Daud anticipated, and yet so much more. He set his sights on it a few years ago, after he watched a Warfare Overseer confiscate an entire coven’s worth of runes from an old manor and set the damn place on fire. He wondered then if they destroyed them or kept them. He’s seen the charms and runes used them as examples, preached about on street corners, the Abbey branding anyone who holds one a heretic and a sinner.

  
Daud has felt the unending call of those beautiful, cobbled pieces of bone. He’s found them carved from the carcasses of whales into charms as small as his fingers or as large as dinner plates. Their thicker, more arcane counterparts made from runes have whispered to him so loudly he couldn’t sleep with them near his bed. There are blackened ones, made from human bone and blood, that call out just the same but give gifts at a price opposed to the usual boons the bones beget. They come in all shapes, sizes, natures, granting him more power and abilities that feed his connection with the Outsider himself, a god, all-powerful and all-knowing and gleefully condescending in his observations.

  
Daud was twenty-six and had much of the world to see. He knew that. He wanted to see the academy, Morley, Tyvia, Pandyssia. He wantws to work his way through the world, experience every place he’d read about in books. The paintings in the library in Dunwall weren’t enough to satisfy him, not by a long shot. He had to feel the wind on his face, touch the snows of Tyvia, feel the sands of Morley’s temperate beaches under his feet. He had to find the temples of Pandyssia and see if they worshiped the same god he did.

  
But he started with the Abbey. They’re close, Whitecliff was in Gristol and it didn’t take much to find a carriage heading south. It’s where their heavy research was done, it’s where they sent initiates. The men wandering around the Abbey in Whitecliff were new to the way of the Overseers, still training. All of them new to their work with their brothers from local chapters sent down south to finish their preparation before being deployed across the world. And people thought this religion was anything less than militant. A joke.

It didn’t take much to get a uniform. It took more to sit with his kidnapee, Alejandro, in a basement for a week and memorize every detail of his life: names, dates, friends, customs of the Abbey. He practiced his voice, learned his walk, his mannerisms, the way he stood. He memorized their strictures, their history, the Litany, learned to kneel. Then he knocked the man out and stripped him, dumped him in a town on the way to the stronghold.  
He knew first hand how the Abbey got their recruits. Alejandro was only eighteen, scared, had a black eye under that horrible mask. He was eighteen once. He was scared once. What he wouldn’t have given for a second chance.

 

  
With his mark, Daud supposed that’s what he was intended for. To be the second chance for someone taken from their home, their family, their country. Perhaps that’s who he would be as he learned to use the gifts the Outsider gave him.

They let him in without so much as asking him to remove his mask. That was the most embarrassing part, for the Abbey. For all their talk of command and strict adherence to safety and protection from the evils of the universe, their Overseers could be remarkably dull.

  
He followed his orders for exactly fifteen days before he found what he was looking for. The key to the stairwell, the one that wound down into the basements. Contraband was sent there, along with anything intended for research. He knicked it off the man in charge of inventory near the front desk, palmed it into his glove. Easy. The next step was exploring.

Thankfully, he had a little gift: night vision from the Outsider. Slipping down the massive stone steps, he kept his breathing quiet, kept his steps lighter. The moon hung in the large glass windows of the chapel, spearing the stairwell with columns of pale white light every story he descended until he made it underground. It was black as pitch, but all that roamed the halls were two Overseers on their night shift, easy to avoid with a quick jaunt over the chandeliers present even in the deeper halls of the fortress. They just had to be ostentatious.

  
There were scores of rooms. Research labs. Locked vaults. Furnaces where bodies and evidence and runes themselves were burned. A chapel in each corner of the massive square layout, for consecration and prayer at all hours and any convenience. It was impossible to choose where to start, the building an open River Krust for him to plunder. Daud settled in an alcove above a doorway and closed his eyes, reached out, and listened for their call.

The basement was silent moments before, all that filled his ears were the soft taps of boots on stone every few moments, the crackle of the fires atop their torches. His senses were strong, heightened by the mark, and he could smell the drip of water down the walls of the stone as cool night air condensed on it. He could smell the fires in the furnace rooms. He could feel the soft rushes of air through grates that kept the basement floor ventilated.

  
When he closed his eyes and opened them, another kind of vision crackled into view. He could see them. The outlines of runes, charms, dozens of them, stacked in rooms and along shelves, one that hadn’t burned properly in a furnace. Something blazed a vicious and angry purple on his peripheral and he turned his head. As his eyes focused, Daud snapped them shut, the burning purple of the archway so blinding and bright he thought he’d seared it into his eyes for days to come.

  
Daud grit his teeth, rubbed his eyes, breathed through the pain. He blinked until the vision calmed, kept himself quiet as to not be heard. Found. Killed for his trespass. But as he did he felt their call, the draw, the scream, the bones begging to be touched by someone who knew their purpose and their power.

  
And only thirty meters away in a research lab there was a monstrous arch of bone, carved with the marks and words of the Void, large enough to stand under. He had to see it. He had to.

He clenched his left hand and made his way to another light fixture, then an outcrop of stone where a candelabra was intended to go. The door to what he hoped was the correct room was only ten meters away. The young assassin plastered himself to the wall, held his breath and dared not move as the Overseer patrolling passed. He couldn’t knock them out, couldn’t kill them, or they’d know they’d been robbed. He wanted to take it all and be gone long before they Abbey had realized anything had been pilfered.

  
So he kept still, waited for the footsteps to pass, and as they echoed down the hall ahead Daud slid off the polished stone into the doorway. Another light glimmered into view ahead, the other guard on his patrol, and Daud made his way into the door without a sound just in time. The metal was cool even through the thick leather gloves the Overseers wore, and that was all he had to wear in this place.

  
The irony of stealing runes, cavorting with the Outsider, in their uniform right under their noses was not lost on him.

Daud felt a palpable sense of anticipation as the arch of bone behind him whispered. Begged. Pleaded for his contact. It felt like hands pressing at his skin, touching his spine and the backs of his arms, trying to pull him close. Beckoning. Crying out. Keening for him to turn around and witness the pure arcane power assembled into something new and interesting. It was with a grin, sharp and eager, that he turned and stared at it.

The thing fucking glowed. It shimmered, didn’t need a candle or a torch to see. The archway had such a thick aura of purple he thought he might be able to touch even that as he stepped over, reached out to feel its raw power. As his feet carried him across the brown carpet laid heavy on the stone laboratory floor, he felt light. Unreal. Almost ethereal. As Void-touched and connected to the Outsider as this massive bone monument.

  
There was a chalk circle drawn in the stone where the archway stood, dead-center in the room. The carpet had been peeled back and now the monument stood proud and untouched. A sign placed dead in front of it declared:

  
**“DO NOT ENTER. OBJECT NATURE UNKNOWN.”**

  
Which really, to Daud, was just a challenge.

  
He walked around the sign, waved his hand dismissively. Amateurs.

  
The moment his boot touched the chalk circle his mark seared with purple light.

  
The archway lit up to match.

  
Fuck, they’d notice that.

  
Daud’s steps grew longer, hand reaching out on instinct to touch the bone. If he could just quiet it-- speak to it-- calm it, control it--

  
A stupid idea, really. In hindsight. Honestly. He should’ve known better. The Void can’t be controlled.

  
The arch flared with purple energy and he stepped straight through it. It felt like being thrown on his back, stomped on, and thrown to his feet all at once. Daud’s stomach churned, lurched, flipped in on itself as he gasped and opened his eyes. He hadn’t realized he’d closed them. But as he did, he squinted, narrowed them, stood still as stone on reflex.  
He certainly wasn’t in the Abbey anymore.

  
He wasn’t-- in the same building, from the feel of it.

  
This building was softer. It was hard to explain, but Daud felt quieter. More secure. The stone he was surrounded by was smooth but gray, the sconces set into the walls had small blue canisters locked into the bottoms that glowed gently. The lights were off. The room was black. It was so quiet he could hear himself breathe.

  
Daud blinked. Turned on his vision. Looked around desperately. Nothing-- nothing for as far as he could see, in any direction. He looked up-- there, far above, a hundred and fifty meters or more-- a stash of runes, or maybe a shrine. There were some wires leading along a wall in the hallway ahead of him, but nothing more. The room was barren-- bookshelves and glass cases, a rug on the floor-

  
And under the rug-

  
A circle. A massive circle that glowed so faintly he had to focus on it to ensure it was there. Daud stepped to the side. Found the edge of the rug. And threw it back.  
It hardly budged, heavy and thick and luxe. It had to be expensive. Wherever he was, it was ostentatious. Or governmental. Daud’s mind reeled through the possibilities as his fingers touched the soft blue fabric, then traced the outline of the paint on the stone floor.

  
It wasn’t visible without his dark vision active. It was light, faded in places, but the circles still connected. Some of the words were faded, the symbols scraped off. It was more preserved where covered by the carpet, but it felt old. Forgotten. Ancient like the bones that brought him here, ancient like the Void.

  
Daud had the feeling in his stomach, that feeling that screamed he’d fucked up royally and it was going to take weeks to fix. Void, he hated that feeling.

  
Daud adjusted the straps of his uniform, checked for his sword, slid his palm over the pouches where vials of poison were still intact. He ensured the mask he wore was still in place, the metal warmed by his breath and his skin. Face covered, good. Armed, even better.

  
The room he was in was long, a door at either end. He ventured to the one dead ahead, opened it a slit-- it creaked obnoxiously, the hinges old and unused. He let out a sigh as he stepped through, shut it behind him. His mark glowed, carried him up to a ledge that ran along a stairwell. His vision flared-- and he felt some fatigue. All this use of his mark was exhausting him, making his joints burn, his mind ache. If he could only figure out where he was…

  
Up two flights of stairs and Daud found himself on what he hoped was ground level. There were no windows even here, until much higher in the massive hall he found himself in. It echoed with the creaks and groans of an old, massive building, a footstep dozens of meters away from one of the guards pacing this floor bouncing off each high arch and up the stairs. Everything seemed...open. Easily navigated. The halls were lit, but sparing, and as he squinted through one of the high, opaque windows, he thought he saw the moon.

Daud followed a guard along a few halls-- up some stairs, through some doors. All bookshelves. A pair sleeping in a bed on the other side of the wall-- their home? It was huge. Ostentatious. He’d never been inside. And who were they, that they didn’t know their basement had a portal to another place? They’d left it unguarded. Unwatched. There were even more guards above, dozens. A few more sleeping forms in a corner, as he made his way around. Cased the place. He didn’t recognize the uniforms, with their blue jackets and black helmets. It was all so bizarre.

  
And then he made his way to the throne room. And there on the walls was the signet of the Empire, the four keys, the blue banners of the Kaldwin family. He was in Dunwall fucking Tower.

  
But things were...wrong, about it. The throne was sleek, sharp. The room was lined with blue banners and roses. Everything seemed too new. Too softened. This isn’t how he’d heard Euhorn Kaldwin’s throne room described. This didn’t seem right. Daud’s mind raced as he crouched on a chandelier, pushed his mask up. His thumb between his teeth, Daud tried to parse what had happened. He was moved through space. Was it too impossible to have been moved through time as well…?

* * *

 

The whisper of runes woke him.

  
Runes, and the deep feeling something was different, the kind of feeling in his stomach he gets when something Void-touched is nearby. Dangerous in the way he feels when Emily sneaks out at night.

  
Corvo sat up, the blanket falling from his shoulders. The man sleeping beside him stirred, grunted in his sleep, turned over. An arm reached out for purchase around Corvo’s waist, but found him sitting. Daud sat up, rubbing at his eyes.

  
“Mm?”  
“Did you feel that?”  
The look the old man gave him was flat, tired, unamused. Corvo smirked.  
“Right. Something’s….off.”  
“Mm.”  
Both men slid out of bed with practiced ease, pulled on pants, boots, coats. Daud went for his sword, Corvo for his own after a moment’s thought.  
“You said what was left of that coven was cleared out?”  
“I did the interrogations myself. Molly was clever, but she wasn’t quiet. My spies arrested the last of them.”  
“Likely not witches then.”  
“Likely not.”

  
Corvo had taken on Daud as Royal Spymaster five years after the interregnum. For all the times he thought it was a mistake, having someone at his right hand at any given moment overpowered that doubt, that guilt, and Daud had done nothing but serve. With loyalty.

  
Thoughts of that buzzed in his mind as Corvo strapped his belt into place. Six months ago, Delilah came back. Tore their country apart. They were still healing. Corvo was tired, but his work as Royal Protector didn’t sleep. So there they stood, dressing to the nines while the moon bore down above them through sheet glass windows, angry and demanding. It had to be three, perhaps four in the morning.

  
He was going to find whatever had the nerve to wake him and show it a lesson.

* * *

 

There were newspapers being laid on the dining table on the main floor. Daud waited, shaking a leg from where he sat near the ceiling, for the maid to scuttle off. He blinked down, snatched one, and returned to his hiding spot.

  
1853\. That seemed impossible.

  
Emily Kaldwin was Empress. Young. Only twenty six. Corvo Attano was her father. Jessamine Kaldwin was her mother, assassinated almost sixteen years ago. There's a memorial service weeks away, to mark the date, and celebrate...something. A coup. Something settled by the Royal Protector, Corvo, with the help of the Royal Spymaster.  
Daud felt his head spin.

  
Forward in time was right. Decades. Decades ahead, seeing things he should never see. This felt impossible, felt wrong, but he could move in space and pause the flow of time itself-- what’s to say a high enough concentration of void energy couldn’t move him--

  
He felt as if he couldn't breathe. He was seeing, feeling, experiencing the future. It was more than he ever imagined.  
He made his way down from the ledge. Found a hall with more history-- he had to learn as much as he could. Before he was pulled back, or he-- died? Or perhaps he was stuck there. Daud was nervous. Terrified. He checked for guards and sneaked along the underside of a stairwell to find a painting of the late Empress. She was….as to be expected, beautiful. Regal. There was a plaque below her name. Before Daud could read it, a hand covered his throat, squeezed tight, and his world went black before he had the chance to fight back.

* * *

  
“Shit.”  
“What in the _void_ \--”  
“This can’t be good.”  
“What’s happening?”  
“Do I look like I know?”  
“He looks like you-- he is you-- there’s no scar?”  
“Can’t be older than thirty, no scar. Got that at thirty-one-- this is why I hate that black-eyed fucker, do you see now? Shit like this happens. Out of the blue one day you’ll run into your own damn self and there’s no explanation--”  
“What do we do with him?”  
“Send him back the fuck where he came from, obviously.”  
“How?”  
“You ask him!”  
“You’re-- It’s you, you’ll do better.”

  
Corvo could never say he hated how expressive Daud was; all it took was a glare and he’d said about as much as he needed to get across. But it could get annoying, when Corvo could tell what each and every frown meant and he simply had to deal with Daud's quiet resgination. He sighed with only the mildest of frustration and waved a hand. Daud retreated out of sight, Corvo sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of his lover's younger self.


	2. Yourself

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i'm not dead i'm sorry

When Daud came around he expected to be tied up, handcuffed, or beaten bloody. He was none of those things, and was actually quite comfortable. Which was frankly baffling. Whoever knocked him out was dead silent, he didn’t even sense them. And they were strong. The arm across his throat said enough to that effect. To top it all of he seemed to be sitting on a large bed, bigger than any he’d ever sat in-- in a suite even larger.

The room was lit well; the ceiling a soft white, the walls warm. It was cozy. His fingers and toes didn’t ache with the chill that usually saturated the abbey. Instead he felt comfortable, well-rested. A shift of each limb also confirmed: fully dressed and unrestrained.

He sat up slowly, looking immediately into the eyes of a well dressed, tanned and weathered man in perhaps his fifties. The posture of nobility, the scarred hands and face the gentry, the nose of a Serkonan. Daud smirked. Until he saw the sword, nestled neatly under one large hand.

“What do you want with me.”  
“Mostly?” The man answers in a voice so low and rough it makes Daud feel raw with the tone of it. “To know how you got here.”

Ah, how he broke into Dunwall Tower without anyone noticing. A very fair question. This had to be the Lord Protector. But why wasn’t he, well. Arrested? Daud’s hands pressed into the bed beneath him, the chair the Lord sat in had been dragged over from a massive oaken desk. He looked entirely too comfortable. Was this his room?  
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Try me.” Was that a smirk?  
“And if I do, you’ll have me locked up as some kind of heretic.”  
“Are you a heretic?” It was definitely a smirk.

“I’m an overseer.” He lied. Instinctually. With just the right amount of indignant disgust in his voice, the same way they hissed words like “witch” and “outsider” laced with disdain and fear. This only served to make the man smirk wider, which was just unsettling.

“I’m sure. Well, Overseer….?”   
“Alejandro. Brother Alejandro.”

“Alejandro. How did you manage to get in? Do you know where you are?”

“Dunwall Tower. I came through the basement.”  
The Lord Protector looked him over slowly, his hand lifting to his broad jaw. Callused and scarred fingers scratched his beard, thoughtfully smoothed down his moustache. “What door?”

“It wasn’t a door-- it was. Heretical. We were transporting an artifact when--”

 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” another voice cut in, irritated, lower, from above Daud’s head. It made him jump. “How long are you going to drag this out? Just ask him what it is and we’ll send him back.”

The presence of the man in front of him dominated the room so thoroughly, he hadn’t noticed there was another perched on a nearby bookshelf. Who sat on bookshelves? This strange older man, apparently, most of his face obscured by the hand propping up his chin. A thick scar spiked up his face from his cheek. He was...reading?

The Lord Protector sighed and looked strangely more relaxed. Whoever these men were, they set Daud on edge. The one looked at him like he wanted to eat him, the other barely looked at him at all.

“Alright, alright. How’d you get here. Was it a different rune? Or did he speak to you. You know. Him. The Outsider. Did he send you here?”

Daud’s stomach dropped out around the same moment the man on the bookshelf’s boots hit the floor. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The older man, hair streaked with white and clad in black, took his place behind the Lord’s shoulder. The bodyguard slowly unwound a wrapping around his hand, and Daud’s nerves settled as the fabric dropped away. On the back of his hand was the mark, black as ink like his own.

“My name is Corvo Attano. And yours is Daud.” He smirked, something bright in his eye and glowing with mischief. “And so is his.”

Daud finally took the time to look into the older man’s face. He reached up, tugged the golden metal mask from his own, and let it settle on the bed beside him. There was something familiar in it. In the set of his jaw, the tense pull of his brow. How the scowl seemed...permanent.

His mouth hung open in disbelief. Oh?

His double’s hand slid to Corvo’s shoulder and squeezed it gently. _Oh?_

Corvo smirked, combed fingers over his beard again. He stood slowly, leaving the sword on the table. Oh. Hm.

“And you came here through some manner of Void magic. We’re curious how. With the hope that we can prevent it from happening again.”

Now that was reasonable. What was less reasonable was how they both advanced, stood at the end of the bed. Corvo’s eyes slid to Daud’s face and he raised a brow. Daud felt trapped, but not threatened. It was a combination of feelings he had no way of parsing. So he simply answered.

“There’s a witch’s circle in one of the basement halls. I can lead you to it. It’s old. Faded. Covered by a carpet. It must be attached to an artifact I found--”  
“In Whitecliff.” Both versions of himself finished, in unison. When their eyes met, Daud felt like he’d been lit on fire. It was exhilarating. And terrifying.

“Mm,” they both confirmed, and the smirk Corvo was still wearing really set him on edge.

“Can you make him-- stop that?” The younger Daud gestured to Corvo, his brow knitting.

The two older men looked at each other for a long, silent second. And then Corvo chuckled, rounded shoulders shaking with laughter as his older self covered his mouth to hide a smile.

“My apologies, it’s just--”  
“It’s the _uniform_ ,” the older Daud growled, something horribly amused in his voice.

Daud glanced down at himself. The overseer’s uniform. Plain gray wool with gilt details, the leather harness to hold his pistol and club. He felt his face flush, hoping they would write it off as indignation rather than embarrassment.

“It’s a little old,” Corvo said through his fingers, trying to contain his chuckles.

“Dated, but-- they never did change their fashion sense.  The hideous masks and all.”

Corvo put a hand on the older Daud’s chest and laughed, failing to collect himself.  Daud, seated on the bed, felt a spike of something. Warm. He stared at the hand settled on his older self’s half-open black shirt.

The other Daud caught him looking.

He held eyes with his older self for a heady, suffocating moment. His throat and face burned with what he could only describe as shame, and a mix of something in his chest he’d never felt.

“Corvo,” the older man whispered, and the younger Daud had a feeling the word carried the weight of an entire conversation. They shared a nod, a shrug from Corvo, the softest sigh from Daud.

“We can’t tell you a thing,” Corvo explained, gesturing as he took a step closer to the bed. “We won’t risk changing the flow of fate that brought us here. You’re marked. You’ve met our friend. You know as well as we do, how he likes to see how things...change.”

“We don’t want. This. To change.” Daud’s hand smoothed over Corvo’s shoulders, and the uneasy surge of warmth took young Daud’s stomach again. This, he realized, was them. His face was red-hot, his hands felt shaky.  The two older men exchanged another slow look, and Corvo’s hand reached out for the black leather of the harness around Daud’s chest. He was dragged in, held steadfast and safe in Corvo’s arms.

Daud had never felt so safe.

His heart hammered and his gloved hands raised to settle on Corvo’s chest, more firm and inviting than it had any right to be. Corvo simply smiled, eyes flickering to his lover’s from time to time.

“He refuses to admit how much he enjoys this,” Corvo whispered, hand firm on the small of his back, “I can only imagine how badly you need it.”

He felt his heart skip, beat faster. He felt the burn of want in every inch of his body, and finally placed the emotion as jealousy. Desire, lust, hunger, it all burned in him at once, unbidden and formerly so entirely unwelcome it left him dizzy. Corvo’s hand, weathered with the calluses of sword and gun and the scars of many decades of life, ghosted over his cheek with such a tenderness Daud thought his heart would crack in two.

When Corvo kissed him, it felt like time stopped. Could they do that? Pause the world around them? For a man with so many scars across his fingers and jaw, he was so gentle. Daud’s eyes flickered to his older self, his stomach uneasy.

Another warm hand, just as kind and careful, pet through his hair. The feeling of that, being touched like he was something precious by his own older self, made Daud shudder. He was trapped between two men he was starting to realize were unstoppable forces, the sheer gravity of their mutual presence like a weight pinning him to this place, this point in time.

Daud tipped his head up and pressed his lips to Corvo’s, and things felt right.

“Spend the night with us. And then we’ll send you home.” Corvo’s words were final, almost like an order, a tone of voice he seemed accustomed to using. He could say no. He knew that.

“Alright,” whispered as he curled his fingers into Corvo’s shirt. He felt the weight and heat of someone behind him, and hands that looked and felt just like his own on his hips. It felt so entirely whole to lean back into his own chest, decades older, broader, somehow sturdier.  Corvo’s nose traced down his throat, mouth kissing at his neck light and almost chaste before Corvo pressed a biting mark into his skin in a place that made Daud’s knees feel weak enough to buckle.

Corvo knew where to put his mouth, where to nip and suck at Daud’s throat to make him moan. He had the younger man shuddering and gasping like it was nothing, holding onto the harness around his chest and guiding him. Daud’s mind called up novels he’d read, stories of lovers tying each other up, illicit rendezvous in scandalous places. His cheeks burned with the realization that this experience was right out of a Tyvian bodice ripper.

His own voice was in his ear, but deeper. Darker. Worn with time and undoubtedly ash and smoke. “He knows how I like to be touched. Every spot on my body that makes me hard. “He’ll know the same for you. You’ve never been touched like this, have you?” His hands, older, stronger, didn’t wander from his waist.

His head shook of its own accord, no real powered input coming from his brain. Corvo was looking him square in the eye as he loosed each clasp that held the Overseer’s uniform closed. He took his time, looking up from under his lashes at Daud’s eyes as he opened the harness around Daud’s chest. Nothing but confidence and grace, Corvo slipped the leather from his shoulders and dropped it to the floor with a thud.

The room was quiet, only the sound of their breath between them over the crackle of a fireplace and the ticking of a clock. None of the buzzing of the city or the footsteps of guards, just the soft surussus of fingers on clothes and his own breath in his ear.

Something itched at the back of Daud’s mind. Questions. How this all came to be. How he wound up in bed with the Lord Protector. What came between, what filled the years from street rat to a denizen of Dunwall Tower. He opened his mouth, the words to ask forming on his tongue.

Corvo cut him off with a kiss so slow and searing Daud forgot to breathe.

He moaned, fingers curling in Corvo’s shirt with a desperation he didn’t know he’d held. Fingers pushed the fabric from his shoulders. A voice so low and rough it made him shiver whispered in his ear.

“Let us take care of you.” Daud swallowed tight, heart caught somewhere in his throat, and his shoulders sloped as one broad arm held his chest, fingers on his collarbones-- and another pair of hands unbuckled his slacks.

Oh, so that was well and truly happening? He was about to have real and tangible sex with his future lover and his future self. A surge of something sparked up his arm and he felt...observed. If not openly mocked. Part of him wanted to blame the Outsider for all this, but he had to go and touch whatever that archway was, and now he was here. He made his own bed. And being honest with himself, it looked comfortable.

Daud’s meandering streets of thought cut short as one very insistent hand slipped into his slacks, giving him a squeeze that set his back to an arch.

“So forward,” the older Daud mocked, followed with a quick:

“I know what you like.”  
“He’s young.”

“And yet the first time I touched you it still seemed like your first time--”  
“Corvo,” Daud the older snapped, and it gave his younger self some relief to hear the same level undignified threat coming from his future.

Corvo’s laugh was low and honeyed, the smirk he wore was still somehow comforting as he pushed both Dauds back towards the bed. Daud the younger toppled back with his slacks undone, belts and blades gone from his reach.

Daud felt like it took seconds for him to be laid out in Corvo’s bed, the blue blanket he spread out on was softer than anything he’d ever touched. He curled his fingers into it, the other hand clutching at the arm still wrapped around his chest. His head pillowed in his older self’s lap, Corvo settled between his thighs and nipped at his skin with staggering precision. Each bite felt electric, and he felt hot lips and a wet tongue on his hole as his knees were held apart by confident hands.

It made him keen. The older Daud chuckled, petting his shoulder, cupping his cheek. “Shhh. Can’t be making the guards curious. They’re only used to hearing us, not a third.”

Corvo’s head popped up from between his legs. “Well, there was the time with the--”

Daud’s hand waved, dismissed him, “Go back to work.” Their easiness, their comfort with each other, calmed him. He didn’t know what to ask, what to say, how to communicate that he’d never been touched like this. But the version of himself holding his shoulders, petting his chest so softly with hands rough enough to catch on the light hair across his pectorals, that man knew all these things. Knew his insecurities, knew his hang-ups, knew how being held like this normally made him feel.

And he slept with Corvo every night, called him lover, held him close.

The younger man’s body shuddered with crashing waves of feelings he couldn’t parse, wasn’t given a spare moment to process with Corvo’s mouth teasing away at skin so sensitive he was sure it would burn raw with the scruff of his beard, the nipping of his teeth. Instead it made his breath catch, made his body focus down to the searing heat of it. Made his cock ache and fill, embarrassingly hard and spread out for Corvo to touch.

For his older self to watch. The older Daud pet his jaw with a tenderness he hadn’t known since his youth. “No need to be shy. He’s seen it all. He thinks you’re beautiful. Even with all your scars.” His own hand, but older, darker and rougher, touched a place on his stomach.

“The ones you don’t have yet, that you’ll wear with pride.”  
“The one on our face?”  
“Mmmm, not telling.”  
“Not fai- ahh--!”  
Corvo’s mouth slipped down over his cock, thick black eyelashes settled on his cheeks, soft graying brown hair tumbling over his brow. Daud had never looked at someone and felt, instantly, that they were beautiful, attractive. That he’d want them. But that’s how he felt- burning want, burning need to please Corvo. To make this man, in all his strength and beauty, want Daud all the same.  
But all he could do as a hot mouth swallowed him down was moan and try not to bow off the bed. His older self cooed, shushed him sweetly, and Daud was caught. Kept. He’d like to be kept, between raw power and strikingly smooth accuracy. Thoughts of being held between them for days on end crept into his mind as he felt Corvo’s fingers play at his hole, as Daud’s hand pressed on his stomach and held him in place.  
“Don’t worry. He wouldn’t hurt you. He wouldn’t hurt us.”   
“Not like this,” Corvo purred.

And Daud laughed.

And the younger Daud moaned, lifting his hips and reaching for Corvo’s hair, burying fingers in the softness of it and pulling, thighs spread wide to welcome him in. Beg for more.   
“That’s it. Good boy.” His own cadence purring in his ear, something he would’ve cut any man’s tongue out for saying but it made his cock twitch and leak onto his belly while Corvo only touched him.   
“So sensitive.” Corvo’s voice teased him. Daud whimpered, threw an arm over his eyes that was peeled away by a strong hand, held above his own head by a sturdy grip. It made him shake, to be held down as Corvo’s mouth wandered over his hips. He gasped for air, feeling like he could fall apart, shake into nothingness with how alight he felt.  
“Remember this. You like this. Let him tie you up. Let him take his time. You won’t regret it.”

Daud wanted to growl, wanted to snap that they’d tell him about _that_ , about how he liked himself touched, but wouldn’t tell him anything else--  
When he opened his mouth to protest Corvo slipped another finger inside him, moved his hand to Daud’s mouth to push fingers against his tongue.

He sucked at Corvo’s fingers, closed his eyes and tasted salt and skin, and moaned as fingers twisted and pressed and made him shake. Fingers inside him, and another set of hands petting his stomach, his hips, his thighs, ghosting where he wanted them, where he needed them--

It all wasn’t fair, drowning in pleasure without recourse, barely able to breathe with how they both knew how to touch him.

To think that someday he’d have that all to himself, every day, any time he wanted it--

Daud couldn’t keep his mind focused on one thing, with the gravel and sand voice in his ear telling him sweet things about everything he’d have, someday. About how Corvo’s fingers were pressed against a spot so sensitive and personal it made him see stars, about how Corvo liked to tie his hands to the bed and touch him there until he begged for it to stop.  
His teeth nipped at Corvo’s fingers and he gasped around them, Corvo’s hand moved to his cock and teased him slow, his fingers curled and Daud’s body left the bed as he moaned, toes curled tight to pain with the surge of pleasure. “Ah--”  
“Gorgeous.”  
“Mm,” Corvo’s voice was raw, something hungry and almost predatory in it. “Always. You’ve always been so beautiful. You just don’t know how you look like this.”  
He tried to respond, tried to speak-- it came out a mess of moans and gasps before he realized Corvo wasn't talking to _him_.  
“I think I’m starting to see it,” the older Daud whispered, something raw in his throat, something surprised and wonderful.

Daud the younger swallowed, and felt the room shift, felt it heat with something dangerous and taboo and, well. If that wasn’t the nature of all things Daud did, marked and chosen. Thick, scarred fingers wrapped around his cock, joined Corvo’s in touching him, stroking him slow until he squirmed and shook on the bed, so close to begging, so close to coming--

Corvo pushed his knee back, held him open and kissed him as he pushed inside--  
Daud stroked him firm and perfect and just how he’s always liked it, when he’s alone and can’t sleep and his body does what it pleases--

Suddenly so full, touched just right and held strong against the stronger, safer, happier version of himself, Daud felt something crack in his chest. Something broke open and tumbled out, something wanting and needy and desperate for validation, something changing and growing and begging for more out of his life, begging for this, for touch like this, for Corvo and his soft, sure hands and rough, sweet voice.

Daud’s knees pressed to Corvo’s sides, his arm clutched tight to the shoulder of his older self, his fingers buried in Corvo’s hair, holding them both, riding out the tide of it as Corvo filled him and kissed him and purred for him.

“You’re beautiful, Daud.”  
“Mm. We are.” He felt lips at his temple, gasped into Corvo’s mouth as Corvo’s hips pressed tight against him, as he rocked against his sturdy frame and Daud teased his slit, whispered, sending him off:  
“Just let go. Feels good, doesn’t it? You’re so lucky. He’s so good at this. Lucky boy, always so lucky when you were young.”  
He spilled over his own hands with a whimper and shaking thighs, and Corvo wasn’t finished-- he just rolled his hips and fucked him deep, steady, moved his lips to Daud’s shoulder to suck a mark against his collarbone. “Should’ve kept the harness on-- turned you over and fucked you hard-”  
“Corvo, be gentle.”  
“I am being--- mm, gentle-”  
“Corvo--”  
“C-corvo-”  
He joined his older self in protest, twisting, shaking, heels digging into the sheets as he felt overwhelmed, overstimulated. Overwanted. Daud’s hands held him tight, held him still, pet his stomach, and his fingers lifted to Corvos’ mouth where Corvo licked them clean. Filthy. They were both filthy, heretics, heathens, and everything he learned, everything he saw, made him want them all the more. Made him want to be just like them, to do as he pleased because he knew the truth of the world and all it could give him.

Corvo’s own breath came in a sharp gasp, his eyes opening in a flicker and focusing on Daud-- one, then the other, then unfocused as he pressed his forehead to Daud’s shoulder, rocking into him hard and groaning. “Void, you--”

Warmth coursed through him, settling low in his stomach, and Corvo settled over him, chest pressed to his, kissing him deep and sucking at his tongue--

His head tipped up to kiss his older self and Daud could only watch, pant and stare as they shared a moment, shared _him_ , shared everything.

He felt exhausted. Sleep welcomed him, dragged him in, pulled him under again. The weight and warmth of them both felt safe, felt right. Daud’s fingers pressed to Corvo’s shoulders and held him close, held him tight for want of never leaving.

 

\------  
  
“You know we have to send him back.”   
“Mmhm.”   
“Corvo.”   
“Shh. He’s asleep.”   
“I don’t remember this happening. There’s something strange happening here.”   
“Just enjoy it.”   
“That is _never_ how this works.”   
“For tonight it can. Then tomorrow we can send him back. Erase the circle. Wait for the Outsider to decide he wants to tease us for this like he always does.”   
“I hate that he’s so nice to you.”   
“Jealous.”   
“Shut up, go to sleep.”

“Hah.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hahahahah HOLY SHIT I WROTE THAT IN *APRIL*?  
> I'M REALLY SORRY  
> so in the span of like, having literally 2/3 of this written and never publishing it i finished grad school and got promoted  
> sorry i meant to do this so long ago oh my *god* i'm sorry  
> the end is a wee bit rushed but i was intending to make this really filthy and sexy but it mostly just ended up being feelings? i'm awful
> 
> i do have a lot of notes and an outline for a spymaster AU because I live for that so i'll try to work on that soon
> 
> this fic was inspired by this art by zznih: https://twitter.com/zznih/status/962610998812147713  
> i like daud in the overseer's uniform and being bashful when corvo kisses him okay

**Author's Note:**

> So there's a veritable mountain of lead-in to what I intended to be a two page NSFW ficlet? I guess?? That will also lead to a Spymaster Daud AU because that's my shit??? If you find any typos or inconsistencies please let me know in the comments, I wrote this when I should've been asleep.
> 
> Chapter 2 soon, I promise. My titles are BAD.  
> Edit 4/23 for tense and paragraph placement.
> 
> Please come talk to me on twitter (@astharoze) or discord (Ellie#0395) about Dishonored and Daud I love them so much


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